The Chinese have long been using ginseng as an aphrodisiac, and new research found that pills made from the root really can bring back the spark in men suffering from erectile dysfunction.
Sheng Li/Reuters

For thousands of years, the Chinese have used ginseng to cure a number of ailments, and now scientists have found that the root may also have the power to heal a man's love life.

The Chinese have long been using ginseng as an aphrodisiac and new research found that pills made from the root really can bring back the spark in men suffering from erectile dysfunction.

A new study conducted in South Korea found that taking ginseng pills for just a few weeks significantly improved sexual performance in men with erectile dysfunction.

Previous studies have also suggested that ginseng can help fight impotence, but experiments were mainly conducted on mice.

South Korean researchers recruited more than 100 men who had been diagnosed with erectile dysfunction for the study.

In 2007, researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that 18 million American men over the age of 20 are affected by erectile dysfunction.

While the dawn of prescription drugs like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra have helped revive the love lives of many men in the last decade, but a large proportion of men who take them see no improvement.

These men often need to resort to other options like injecting drugs straight into their penis or using pumps to manually boost blood supply to their organ. Unsurprisingly, neither of these two options is popular among men.

While natural herbal remedies like ginseng have been promoted as being alternative treatments, experts say there is still not enough scientific evidence to support the use of ginseng for treating erectile dysfunction.

Ginseng has been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine to improve overall health. The plant contains several active ingredients, known as ginsenosides or panaxosides, believed to be responsible for its medicinal effects.

Researchers at Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea, split the men into two groups. Half of the men took four pills a day containing Korean ginseng berry extracts for eight weeks while the other group took identical placebo pills for the same amount of time. Afterwards, researchers calculated improvements in sexual function by using an established measuring scale known as the International Index of Erectile Dysfunction.

Scientists found that the men who took the ginseng tablets showed a small but significant improvement in sexual function compared to men in the control group.

"Korean ginseng berry extract improved all domains of sexual function," researchers wrote in the study. "It can be used as an alternative to medicine to improve sexual life in men."